SharePoint: Internal and External Functionality
March 29, 2012
When you hear the term “dark” these days it usually refers to the surge in vampire romance fiction or Stars Wars variants. In the world of web design, however, dark means that web developers use dark web templates on their pages. It takes a good eye for color and contrast to make a dark web site work and Top SharePoint found “50 Beautiful Dark Web Sites Built on SharePoint.”
As the article’s author explains:
“Personally I am very fond of dark websites even though clean light web design is the main choice, especially in the corporate world. It is true that dark designs have a tendency to feel a bit heavy and harder to read if lot of text is presented but I feel they look more elegant and creative. Besides, using dark backgrounds you can make the content stand out and be the main focus.”
Perusing through the list the web sites that catch my eye are “The City of Calgary,” “Hard Rock Casino Tulsa,” “Club Paradiso,” and “NSU.” Pick your own favorites and discover new ideas for SharePoint web design. No matter what graphic colors you use for your SharePoint site, take into account that if you want visitors to find information you will need an excellent search enterprise.
If you want to use SharePoint for more than internal document sharing, you can turn to Search Technologies to assist you in leveraging SharePoint. In addition to dynamic content and rich media, a Search Technologies’ implementation can integrate your public facing Web site with your internal SharePoint system. You will be able to establish immediate and direct interactions with your prospects and customers without losing the SharePoint functionality you need to run your business in a cost effective manner. To learn more, visit www.searchtechnologies.com.
Iain Fletcher, March 29, 2012
Protected: A Little SharePoint Humor
March 28, 2012
Considerations for SharePoint Career Development
March 28, 2012
Over at the ShareMuch Blog, Yaroslav Pentsarskyy looks at SharePoint career development in, “How Come Joe-the-SharePoint-Guy Doesn’t Know? SharePoint Career Evolution.” As SharePoint continues to expand and develop, IT employees have to keep up with continuing education and an evolving skill set. Pentsarskyy shares his subjective suggestion:
1. Pick your discipline area (Infrastructure, Technical BA, Developer, User Interface Developer etc.). Something you`re prepared to be an expert in;
2. Be clear on deliverables you are going to have to produce as a part of your area focus (Design Document? DR plan? Code? Governance Plan? etc.). Deliverables will outline your role on projects (usually your title is too vague, everyone wants to know what you`re actually going to produce);
3. Pick a few but not too many product areas (BI, Collab, Publishing etc) and be good at those.
Pentsarskyy warns that trying to keep up with everything may leave you as an expert in nothing. Honing in on a development area may be beneficial to many IT employees that feel stretched too thin across growing collaboration products.
SharePoint is a ubiquitous platform that continues to grow. To add rich value to your system while also providing an easier experience for your users, consider an intuitive solution like Fabasoft Mindbreeze.
Their out-of-the-box solution gives you information pairing, mobility, and a more powerful search in a user-centered environment:
“Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise understands you, or more precisely understands exactly what the most important information is for you at any given moment. It’s a center of excellence and simultaneously your personal assistant for all questions. The information pairing technology brings enterprise and Cloud together.”
Consider the full suite of products and solutions at Fabasoft Mindbreeze.
Philip West, March 28, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Protected: You Do Not Need Hot Water to Shrink Your SharePoint Crawl Database
March 27, 2012
Harnessing a Strong ROI for your SharePoint Investments
March 27, 2012
Return on Investment (ROI) is no doubt a main focus for both IT and financial officers in the organization. Technology investments can be heavy on the front end and hard to measure as the system develops. The topic is addressed in, “Why is Measuring a Hard ROI for SharePoint Just so Hard?”
The author explains the issue,
“The reality is that all businesses have soft costs such as turnover, lost productivity, low morale, lost sales and missed opportunities. And any combination of those might drive soft cost dollars in your organization which can have big impact on your bottom line — sometimes just as much as the hard costs and other times even more. Many organizations simply don’t measure these types of costs because they don’t understand it or simply don’t have the capability to measure them. Or perhaps people are just focused on meeting deadlines without questioning the value or impact to the customer. Meanwhile, project management within many organizations seems like chaos, deadlines get missed, decisions are delayed, tiger teams get formed, and the insanity of our day to day work life continues.”
Budgets are tight and the economy has been shaky for a while. Everyone is taking a close look at dollars coming in and out of the business. The brief article may be worth a read to help you develop a roadmap for measuring ROI. The piece is part of a larger series of articles on measuring ROI that you may want to check out.
To boost your ROI now without the need for training and studying, consider adding an intuitive third party solution, like Fabasoft Mindbreeze. Here is a highlight:
“The Fabasoft Mindbreeze Appliance is the optimal basis for highly efficient enterprise-wide search and easy configuration. To utilize the full potential of a software solution it is essential that hard- and software are fully aligned. Even more, the required time for deployment to the user is critical for gaining the highest ROI. The Fabasoft Mindbreeze Appliance components have been optimally synchronized in numerous tests. The Fabasoft Search Appliance cuts down the time-to-user dramatically.”
A strong ROI is imperative for the sustainability of your enterprise search investments. Learn more about the Fabasoft Mindbreeze solution at http://www.mindbreeze.com/.
Philip West, March 27, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Protected: Meet the SharePoint Experts at Their Own Conference
March 26, 2012
Overcoming Perceived SharePoint Barriers with Mindbreeze
March 26, 2012
Over at the AIIM.org SharePoint Experts Blog, Rich Blank confronts the tensions between SharePoint adoption, social technologies, and business goals in, “Is SharePoint an Obstacle in Your Organization.”
Blank summarizes:
“Bottom line is that SharePoint is not the obstacle. SharePoint has simply forced organizations to focus on real underlying information management, governance, compliance, service delivery, and cultural change issues at scale. In fact, if you view things holistically, the vast Microsoft ecosystem provides all the capabilities, security, and compliance required for effective communication, collaboration, news/information, team sites, communities, social, search, ECM at an attractive total cost of ownership.”
Blank suggests that organizations can focus on delivering collaboration as a service in order to introduce capabilities to users. He also warns against rushing into the hype of social business without carefully considering the overall architectural vision and basic information management principles.
This is not the first discussion on SharePoint out-of-the-box capabilities not meeting collaboration expectations in the organization. One way to make your SharePoint system accessible and more powerful is by integrating a third party solution. We like the feedback we’ve heard from customers of Fabasoft Mindbreeze. Mobility and Cloud search capabilities are just some of the Mindbreeze benefits. With information pairing, Mindbreeze allows you to connect valuable business knowledge with the right people:
“It sounds easy at first glance but it’s technologically highly complex. 6 years of research and development work later, Fabasoft Mindbreeze has the answer: Information pairing. This involves the boundless networking of company relevant information within an enterprise or organization and placing it in the Cloud. In my opinion acting in this way in all business issues is reliable, dynamic and profitable – the basis for competitive advantage.”
Read more about the full suite of solutions at http://www.mindbreeze.com/.
Philip West, March 26, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Protected: SharePoint People Are Cool People
March 23, 2012
Accessing Unstructured Data across Various Platforms of Digitally Published Content
March 23, 2012
One of the key components to successful collaboration is the accessibility of the digitally published content in the information environment, whether it is a wiki, portal, document, blog, etc. In “Communities vs. Portals, Blogs, Wikis, Documents, and More,” the author weighs-in on the issue as it relates to providing relevant and dynamic information to users in an effective way.
The author had this to say:
Communities encourage participation by definition as much as they allow for consumption. And activity streams provide an easy and efficient way to aggregate, consume, share, and engage. With that said, some people like to see a bunch of boxes on a web page in a dashboard / newspaper type view. Fair enough…Of course the value of that information in the portal becomes much less because people can only consume in a traditional portal vs. taking some type of action to collaborate on or share the information & knowledge you have just gained.
The author argues for providing all users, even the ones that don’t yet embrace social business and stick to static publishing, with the ability to subscribe and share. If you have vast amounts of unstructured data in your organization, look to increase the value of your information assets with a third party solution, like Fabasoft Mindbreeze.
No matter where your information is held, on-premise or in the Cloud, Mindbreeze search allows users to easily find and access business knowledge. Here you can read about the user-friendly interface that your tech-laggard users will appreciate.
The Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise user interface is based on Web 2.0 technology and combines simplicity with elegance. The operation is self-explanatory. Work just as you are used to. Access your data from anywhere. Also on smartphones and tablets. Elegant design, easy operation. With you wherever you are. Find and access your enterprise and cloud information straight away.
So while experts in the field continue to discuss ways to increase user adoption through dynamic portals, Fabasoft Mindbreeze is a comprehensive search solution with an intuitive interface out-of-the-box that you can deploy now.
Philip West, March 23, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Check Your BLOB Cache Lately?
March 22, 2012
It’s 9 a.m. Do you know what your BLOB cache is doing?
SharePoint users everywhere are discovering there’s a little more to using the software’s binary large object (BLOB) cache than to just set it and forget it, according to a recent post on the SharePoint Interface blog site.
Using SharePoint’s BLOB cache without altering a few important attributes from their out-of-the-box values will lessen the strain on your SQL servers and speed up a site’s performance by storing large objects like images, video and CSS in a system’s Web front ends.
But just using the SharePoint BLOB cache without a little tweaking can wind up sending a Web publication’s audience different content than expected, warns SharePoint blogger Sean McDonough.
“The SharePoint BLOB Cache is a powerful mechanism to improve farm performance and scalability, but it shouldn’t be turned on without some forethought and a couple of changes to the default BLOB cache element attribute values,” McDonough writes in his post Do You Know What’s Going to Happen When You Enable the SharePoint BLOB Cache?.
Specifically, the author cautions about using the default max age limit for a specific object on a given page – like an image, for example. According to McDonough, in allowing SharePoint’s BLOB cache attribute defaults to stand, the image intended to remain indefinitely on a page may only last 24 hours.
Other attributes to consider modifying to a specific environment include allowing for Web applications used in multiple zones by setting specific attributes appropriate for each (an internal and a public zone, for example) and changing path expressions to curtail what files call the BLOB cache home.
Obviously, each environment has different needs and resources to deal with them. Hiring an outside system architecture consultant like Search Technologies is a good move.
So whether it’s an online product catalog at hand or a Website dedicated to traveling the world on a budget, using SharePoint’s BLOB cache feature can really speed things up but think before just firing it up right out of the box.
Jonathan Tressler, March 22, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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